The Trump phenomenon's most revealing and characteristic moments – not its most crucial, nor most brutal, nor most dangerous, nor most senseless, but possibly its most revealing – occurred earlier this fall. Over the span of a few weeks, the nation's leader commenced revealing everyone his designs for a lavish reception room twice the size than the White House and subsequently started unilaterally ripping down the eastern section to construct it.
He has done things ten thousand times worse – the current estimate of casualties from his cuts to international aid amounts to 600,000 and rising, and this week research forecast his petroleum strategies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – truly, no other president would have contemplated – solo demolishing large sections of the executive mansion to build a royal-themed celebration hall, with the enthusiastic participation of numerous America's wealthiest, the majority of whom have business with public institutions.
We went from 'the humble will receive the world' into 'the humble will perish of cholera'
As confusing as it is to observe the leader try to upend the old idea regarding democracy and substitute it with its polar opposite, there exists a significant segment of Americans who should not find it completely novel. That is those of us – within elder demographics almost a majority – who were brought up within mainstream Protestant traditions.
We have observed throughout the years while conservative evangelical congregations turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of our understanding of him. At its most basic, they transformed an image of love into a figure of hostility who endorses precisely the cruelties that he condemned in biblical teachings; this change developed more slowly, through multiple decades instead of months, however it is still disconcerting in the same ways, a disorienting gut punch for many of us.
A Harmful Christianity Takes Hold
Hence I shall explain the Christ from my upbringing, since in theory Jesus is the center of any Christian faith, and since the fastest-growing cadre among Americans could have minimal awareness about him as they consider themselves skeptics or doubters or nones. I take no issue with any of these traditions, nor with alternative spiritual paths; however I believe that contain precious wisdom of great price in biblical accounts.
It is emphatically definitely not the story of a mighty king appearing; instead, an infant arrives to parents without shelter in a garage, who must quickly flee to a foreign land to evade undercover officers. The child matures in simple surroundings, an employed craftsman; his doctrine focuses on affection for others, specifically for the disadvantaged – and not a sentimental love, but a concrete one, expressed by feeding and protecting. The Savior's reaction to violence is to offer the other cheek – not as a demonstration of passive acceptance, but as a method to teach the assailant; his method regarding offenses indicates that whenever someone steals your outer garment you should give him your sweater also.
The evident and straightforward reality that the Jesus in biblical accounts requests a form of profound affection centered on the impoverished is what has always made Christianity something of a provocative belief system: engaging for the populace, but due to its inherent radicalness requiring to be controlled. During the 1950s it was restrained via weakening – Protestant Christianity was so prevalent that it basically sanctified existing conditions.
A Battle for the Best of Us
Therefore I have felt encouraged to witness the persistent defiance to Trump develop in this past year. It has provided substantial consolation to help build the movement that has protested openly through repeated demonstrations, and seems to have inspired citizens to participate in significant amounts in interim political contests. We will need to persist with it, and in the same spirit, with American flags at every demonstration and calls to the highest qualities of American history.
We will be questioned ... how did you receive the stranger? Did you welcome them and receive them or not?
America is best defended, to put it differently, by relationship to the best within national tradition, exactly as the Christian faith is most protected through connection to what makes it special and beautiful, specifically the model of Jesus. In neither case does it imply acting as if the most damaging about the nation and Christian faith did not happen; it represents both meekness and conviction, a combination that serious national faithful should embrace.
